12 



MICHIGAN ROADS AND FORESTS. 



FIGHTING A BIG 



FOREST FIRE 



For days now we have had an opportunity 

 to meet and know the members of the United 

 States Forest Service and to see their work 

 first hand, to watch them in the great forests 

 of California and to see what they are working 

 at and learn what they hope to accomplish, 

 writes a California correspondent. Undoubt- 

 edly they form one of the most interesting 

 and unique bodies of men ever brought to- 

 gether in the country. For the most part they 

 are men of a high order of intelligence and 

 with educations acquired in some of the best 

 schools and colleges in the United States. 

 Such a man is Capt. Elliott, whom we met at 

 Lake Tahoe. Such a man is Mr. Hopping, 

 who is still with us, having come down the 

 mountain from Camp Sierra. Such a man is 

 Col. Shinn, who is in charge of the big forest 

 which stretches for miles to the south of us 

 and comprises more than a million and a half 

 acres. Such a man is Capt. Adams, chief of 

 all the rangers, and next in rank in the forest 

 service to Gifford Pinchot, the official head li 

 the whole system. 



The assertion that "Pinchot has a lot of 

 paper collared dudes doing the work of for- 

 esters and mountaineers" is not supported by 

 the facts as we have been able to get them. 

 Hopping was born and raised in this vicinity. 

 His father and all his relatives were of the old 

 colony that built the great mountain road 

 which leads up to Camp Sierra and the center 

 of the Big Trees. Capt. Redwood is a son of 

 the secretary of the same colony, and his 

 father still lives about midway down the 

 mountain. Capt. Elliott has spent the greater 

 part of his life in the forest where he now has 

 charge. Col. Shinn is of the west and has 

 seen two generations come and go since he. 

 first began to live in the mountains and to 

 study the forests and their proper care. 



Capt. Adams has had a most picturesque 

 career. Although next in rank and honor in 

 the service to Mr. Pinchot, he had a long and 

 hard apprenticeship before acquiring the place. 

 He was a soldier in the war with Spain and 

 served in Cuba and the Philippines. Before 

 that he sailed before the mast and always he 

 has been accustomed to outdoor life. His 

 duties keep him in Washington during the 

 winter months and he spends all of his sum- 

 mers in the mountains. 



The salaries paid in the forest service are so 

 small comnaratively ranging from $1,200 to 

 $2,700 a year and the expense of keeping the 

 necessary horses so great, with the lonely life 

 led by the men, that it would seem impossible 

 to gather together s.uch men as are really 

 found in the service. Almost without excep- 

 tion the chief foresters and supervisors and 

 district rangers are men with college educa- 

 tions. They are men who love the trees and 

 the mountains. In talking with them I found 

 most of them have a conviction that they are 

 doing much for the progress of the world and 

 for the preservation of resources for coming 

 generations, which will make them famed in 

 the future history of the Republic, though but 

 little appreciated now. These men are just 

 like Gifford Pinchot, back in Washington. Fcv 

 the most part they could take their ease and 

 find congenial empoyment elsewhere, but their 

 love for the woods and the great open moun- 

 tain spaces and their conviction that work well 

 done now in the preservation of the great 

 forests will mean much for the future and will 

 hold them to their lives of hardship and toil. 



Without exception they wear the dark green 

 and picturesque khaki of the service, and there 

 is naught to distinguish the relative rank of 

 the men. They pride themselves on their 

 horses and their equipment. They usually 

 have two horses and sometimes two horses 

 and a pack animal. I saw Capt. Redwood ride 

 away, out of Camp Sierra, with his rifle under 

 his saddle pommel, a pack horse carrying pro- 

 visions for six weeks, and a blanket roll in 



which he may sleep at night, and simple cook- 

 ing utensils with which he may cook. He has 

 a tiny mite of a baby, only three days old, 

 born up there under the big trees in Camp 

 Sierra, and it seemed almost pathetic to see 

 him ride away, leaving the anxious mother and 

 the new-born baby looking after him from 

 under the edge of the raised tent flap. He 

 will be gone for weeks. Each day he will 

 climb mountain sides and descend into deep 

 canons and gorges. Each day he will keep 

 his eyes constantly on the sky line to detect 

 signs of the light gray and blue haze which 

 rises toward the sky when there is a forest 

 lire. Many days he will ride from sixty to 

 eighty miles. 



Most lumbermen and mountaineers will tell 

 you that the forest service more than pays 

 for itself in the way in which it saves the 

 destruction of trees and property from the 

 forest fires. I had an opportunity the other 

 day to see how the rangers work and wh.u 

 grim and desperate duty they do up here in 

 the mountains. Fire broke out far up on the 

 side of the Sierra Xevadas. Ralph Hopping, 

 the district ranger in charge, had just arrived 

 at Three Rivers. He had been riding almost 

 continuously for twenty-four hours and had 

 secured but three hours sleep in that time. 

 He rode up to the mountain inn here on the 

 stage route and turned his horse and his pack 

 animal out in the corral. He slipped off his 

 riding boots, threw aside his coat, opened his 

 shirt front, and was just sinking into an after- 

 noon slumber out on the wide front porch 

 when the telephone bell rang. He was sum- 

 moned and told that a fire had broken out not 

 far from the electric plant of the Mount Whit- 

 ney Power Company. Fatigue was forgotten. 

 He shaded his eyes and looked far up the 

 mountain side and across the deep gorge which 

 separated him from the spot where a thin 

 wreath of pale blue smoke was slowly rising. 



"That promises to be a bad fire and we will 

 need all the help possible," he said, almost to 

 himself, as he looked up the side of the moun- 

 tain. "The underbrush and the wild oats are 

 as dry as tinder and I guess we have a fight 

 before us." 



Then he spent fifteen minutes telephoning 

 throughout a country which the Government 

 telephone lines have brought into communica- 

 tion for forty miles or more. To every stage 

 post, to every ranch and to every village and 

 mountain hamlet he telephoned that fire had 

 broken out on the grim old mountain side. 

 and that he wanted sixty men. He teleohoned 

 to his summer headquarters and ordered two 

 of his rangers to meet him. He telephoned to 

 the headquarters of the Mount Whitney Power 

 Company at Visalia and told the officials to 

 hurry out as many men as possible in their 

 big red automobiles and up the mountain side 

 as he felt the great flume of the company was 

 threatened. That flume cost thousands of 

 dollars and carries an immense volume of 

 water in its wood enclosure, from far up the 

 mountain side incline, where it produces 4,000 

 horse-power as it races through the big turbine 

 wheels and drives the electric generators night 

 ami day. 



It was but two miles across the gorge to 

 where the fire was burning, but it was six over 

 the mountain trails to reach the scene. By 

 the time Hopping was on the scene the trails 

 ami roads were alive with men coming to the 

 fire. They reported at once to Hopping. He 

 divided the force into three bodies. One each 

 he assigned to his two rangers and the third 

 he took charge of himself. Then when he saw 

 that a thousand acres were being swept by the 

 great sheet of flames he telephoned to the 

 military post inside the Sequoia National Park 

 and in four hours two score troopers rode 

 down the mountain trail and reported to him 

 for duty. The great and expensive six mile 

 fiume of the power company was threatened. 

 Already the flames had burned it away for a 

 hundred feet or more, sending a flood of water 

 down the gorge like a mountain torrent and 

 stopping one of the two big power plants. 

 Men with sacks and every available article, 



even coats and shirts and undershirts, were 

 beating out the lire at its edges. 



-Mr. Hopping took charge. He stationed 

 men along the flume with orders to break 

 open its top, wet down its sides and wet down 

 a strip on both sides of it which would prove 

 a lire guard. Then with some of the picked 

 men and experienced fire fighters he took up 

 the greater task of starting a back lire and 

 fighting fire with fire to stop the conflagration 

 within a comparatively narrow scope on the 

 mountain side. It would be a long and des- 

 perate story to tell of the work of those fire 

 fighters. It would include the story of the 

 forty-eight hours' light, at the end of which 

 it was thought the fire had been kept within 

 bounds, and just as the men were congratu- 

 lating themselves on their victory the night 

 winds swept down the mountains, sent a solid 

 sheet of flames across the gorge, up the canyon 

 and straight into the expensive fiume, wiping 

 out 400 feet more of it and making the hard, 

 exhausting light necessary all over again. It 

 would include the tale of how Hopping and 

 seven of his fighters were caught in the sheet 

 of flame when it swept over the flume and 

 they were obliged to throw themselves face 

 downward and breathe close to the ground to 

 prevent being stifled. It would include a rela- 

 tion of how they dragged themselves along the 

 flume for three-quarters of a mile to a narrow 

 place in the flames, and then with wet gunny- 

 sacks about their heads and holding their 

 breath, they made a dash through the low 

 burning underbrush for safety on the other 

 side. It would be a story of how the women 

 wives of mountaineers and forest service 

 people came from villages and mountain 

 hamlets and spent the nights and days of the 

 sixty-four hours on the mountain sides mak- 

 ing coffee and serving food and wetting down 

 sacks and making camp comfortable for the 

 fire fighters. 



I was with the men when they came out. 

 Not a man but had his hair and eyebrows and 

 moustache or whiskers singed close to his head. 

 Not one but whose eyes were bloodshot and 

 whose steps were weary and walk uncertain. 

 Not a man who had a whole boot or shoe on 

 his foot or a whole shirt on his back. Half 

 a dozen of them in the early stages of the 

 lire fighting and before supplies came up 

 fought the fire with their shirt in one hand 

 and undershirt in the other, stripped to the 

 waist, and these were cruelly burned. Not a 

 soldier of the two score escaped with a sem- 

 blance of his uniform on his back. Dozen.- of 

 the men descended the mountain side to the 

 power plant and threw themselves on the 

 ground to spend twelve hours in sleep of utter 

 exhaustion. But there was no word of com- 

 plaint. 



TIES IN DEMAND AGAIN. 



It is reported from various sections where 

 lumber operations are conducted that the 

 shortage of railroad tics is the thing that is 

 now worrying railway construction managers, 

 says a Hancock correspondent. It is said 

 the shortage is pronounced and it is with diffi- 

 culty that the roads are able to procure even 

 enough to keep up the smallest repairs. When 

 the money stringency hit the country last fall, 

 practically all of the railroads stopped making 

 repairs and most of them refused to buy 

 for future use. The tie business prior to that 

 lime had been unusually good and the prices 

 of the better qualities had practically doubled 

 in a few years, some of them selling at better 

 than fifty cents each, though the average price 

 in Houghton county .lid not reach that figure. 

 During the prosperous times hundreds of men 

 were engaged getting out ties during the fall 

 and winter seasons aad others were actively 

 employed in the summer time. The tie busi- 

 ness was conducted largely by the smaller 

 operators, many of whom had very little in- 

 vested, while others had all their capital in the 

 business. When the railroads quit buying it 

 hit the dealers hard and many of them almost 

 gave their ties away to meet their expenses. 



It is now reported that there are no ties on 



